It’s an honour to rise this afternoon in support of Bill 190, the latest Working for Workers act, introduced by the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. This is our government’s fifth Working for Workers bill and the fourth one that I’ve had the privilege to speak about in the House. If passed, Bill 190 would expand on the historic reforms in the first four acts, which are already helping millions of Ontario workers.

I want to thank the minister and his team, including his parliamentary assistant from Ajax and his two former parliamentary assistants from Mississauga–Malton and Scarborough Centre, for all their work on this bill. Of course, I also want to mention the incredible work of our former minister, Monte McNaughton. They travelled across the province to consult with workers, unions and employers, advocating for the skilled trades and workers’ health and safety and many more.

I also want to thank all the stakeholders who joined us at my own labour round table in January at Lakeview Village in Mississauga–Lakeshore, including Finn Johnson from the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario, Local 27; Moya MacKinnon from Achēv; and Artan Spahiu from Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services and about 20 more. Speaker, I know their feedback was invaluable in helping to shape Bill 190 and I know that, moving forward, we will continue to rely on their advice.

Before I begin my remarks, the Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured in the workplace was last week, on April 28. Thousands of people across the province held a moment of silence in memory of workers who made the ultimate sacrifice and as a powerful reminder of the ongoing need to improve workplace safety in Ontario.

I was able to attend an event at the Italian Fallen Workers Memorial at the Columbus Centre in North York with the Italian consul general Luca Zelioli, Vaughan mayor Steven Del Duca and many others to honour the memory of thousands of Italian fallen workers, including my own father, who was a welder at the old Texaco refinery in Port Credit. He died of lung cancer and asbestosis when I was only 18, so I want to thank the minister and his team for working to include asbestos in the Occupational Exposure Registry, which is expected next year.

Adam Melnick, the Canadian director of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers, said, and I agree, that:

“We commend [the minister] and the government of Ontario, for recognizing the harm that asbestos continues to cause workers, and their families.

“The inclusion of asbestos in the provincial Occupational Exposure Registry is necessary to understand the ongoing dangers of asbestos in our already-built environment, and the destructive legacy” it has left for so many workers and their families, including my own. He said—and I agree—that this is a very important step towards a provincial asbestos strategy, so again, I want to thank the minister for this.

Speaker, I’ll begin today with schedule 1, which includes amendments to the Building Opportunities in the Skilled Trades Act. Back in 2013, the Conference Board of Canada reported that the skills gap—the gap between the skills our students are graduating with and the skills that our employees need across the province—was costing Ontario over $24 billion, or about 4% of the provincial GDP, because hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs are left vacant across the province. We’ve made great progress since then, but there are still about 237,000 jobs available, which is costing us billions in lost productivity. In part, this is because of the ongoing stigma against the skilled trades.

As the minister announced in Brampton last week, schedule 1 of Bill 190 would help to open new pathways into the skilled trades for older, experienced workers interested in the skilled trades as a second career, but who might not meet the current academic requirements to register as an apprentice. They would be able to use alternative criteria, like professional experience, to give them a second chance at a better job and a bigger paycheque.

We’re developing a new online job-matching platform to help employers and apprentices to network and share opportunities. And, Speaker, we’re building on the successful Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program with a new stream, Focused Apprenticeship Skills Training, to help provide more opportunities for grade 11 and grade 12 students to get hands-on learning experience and learn the critical skills they need to succeed in well-paying careers in the skilled trades through co-op credits in high school.

Speaker, this delivers on a commitment that the Premier made over a year ago to expand options for high school students, beginning in grade 11, to help them enter the skilled trades faster and work towards a full-time apprenticeship. I’d like to thank the minister again, as well as the Minister of Education, for their leadership on this policy.

It is quite a contrast with some members of the other side. After the announcement, Cheri DiNovo, the former NDP member from Parkdale–High Park, shared her reaction on Twitter, which is now X. She wrote, “Who needs to learn history, science, reading when you can stay uneducated and vote Conservative?” As the minister said, there are many young people, including young women, who want to build a career for themselves in the skilled trades. The elitist attitude that the people in the trades are uneducated is exactly what has got Ontario into the labour crisis we face today.

As many members know, before I was elected, I was a dues-paying union member for 31 years at Unifor Local 707 and the Canadian Auto Workers before that. I worked for Ford Canada in Oakville for 31 years, most recently as a vehicle auditor. But when I was running for office in 2018, Michelle Baker, the Liberal chief of staff to Bonnie Crombie at the city of Mississauga, tweeted that I was just “a person who counts car parts.” You know what? If they were able to count, we wouldn’t have run the largest sub-national debt in the province of Ontario.

But I’m very proud of my career at Ford. Again, after my father died of asbestosis, it was an opportunity to support my family and build a better life, but it was a career that was in jeopardy under the former Liberal government as Ontario lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The former Liberal Minister of Finance said that assembly line manufacturing was just “a thing of the past.” This is why I ran for office against the former Minister of Finance, because the Liberals and NDP had abandoned working class people in Ontario.

Last week, I joined the Premier in Caledon to announce that the construction of the Highway 413 would begin next year, creating 3,500 more good union jobs. Victoria Mancinelli from LIUNA said that our government “has done more to advance skilled trades than any government in Ontario’s history.”

She said, “Careers in skilled trades have transformed lives. They have lifted individuals out of poverty, out of violence and difficult situations. They have empowered a sense of purpose, financial stability and a new outlook on life,” and, “Our province, our economy and our country can’t succeed, grow or function without” the incredible, intelligent and skilled workers in the trades. Insulting them is “appalling, ignorant and disrespectful.” I can’t say it better myself.

Next, schedule 2 of Bill 190 would amend the Employment Standards Act to make the hiring process more fair with several new requirements for employers. If passed, sections 8.5 and 8.6 would require job ads to clearly state whether a position is currently available or just for potential future needs. This was based on a story in the Toronto Star about so-called ghost jobs. Employers would also have to provide a decision within a reasonable time after a job interview.

We’re also reducing the administrative burden for sick workers and health care professionals and putting patients before paperwork. For example, Bill 190 would amend section 50 of the act to reduce paperwork burdens for health care workers by preventing employers from requiring sick notes for a worker’s job-protected leave. We know that family doctors already spend up to 19 hours every week filling out forms and other documents, including sick notes. That’s up to half of their work week spent on paperwork and other red tape instead of treating their patients.

The WSIB is also streamlining and modernizing their systems, enabling direct deposits, digital submissions and online claims. I know they’re working together with health sector organizations to explore even more options to reduce administrative burdens on workers and doctors.

Next, we would amend section 132 of the act to double the fines for individuals from $50,000 to $100,000 which would be the highest fine in Canada. We’re also proposing to increase the penalties for repeat offenders. Under the former Liberal government, penalties for repeat offenders who exploited their workers were only $1,000, less than the cost of an iPhone today. Our government is raising this penalty to $5,000 for each employee, each time, which again is one of the highest in Canada, because we know that it is completely unacceptable for bad actors to buy their way out of the consequences of putting their workers at risk.

Finally, I want to thank the minister for consulting on potential future amendments to the Employment Standards Act. In particular, I know he is looking at including IT workers in certain sections, to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and every worker has a basic right for lunch breaks and overtime pay.

Schedule 3 and 5 of Bill 190 would also help to provide fair access to the regulated professions, including engineers, lawyers, teachers and so on, for internationally trained workers. If passed, these professions would be required to develop new policies to accept alternative documents whenever the standard ones are not available for reasons beyond the control of a job applicant, such as a natural disaster or a war, like we’ve seen with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ontario would become the first province in Canada to require these professions to have a policy in place to accept alternative documents and to allow job applicants to get through several steps of the registration process all at once, so they’re not held up at any part of the process, which would be another first in Canada.

The government is also increasing the number of occupations that will be eligible for our Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program’s stream for in-demand skills, and schedule 5 would allow reviewers appointed under the Ontario Immigration Act to delegate their authority to other public servants to help increase the decision-making capacity in the program and to speed up decisions.

I know that moving forward, the minister is also consulting on a new trusted employer model to help reduce the administrative burden on reliable employers that are working with the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program, and I look forward to seeing this as part of Working for Workers number six.

Next, schedule 4 of the bill would amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act to help make the skilled trades more accessible for women and to support women at work. For the first time in Canada, employers at construction sites and other workplaces would be required to keep their washrooms clean and sanitary and to maintain records on washroom cleaning. As well, menstrual products would be required on large construction sites with more than 20 people where the project is expected to last for three months or more.

Speaker, these policies are a direct response to the women in the skilled trades, like Michelle Small in Mississauga, who have told us we need to do this to encourage more women to join the construction industry.

Schedule 4 would also modernize the definition of workplace harassment to include new protections against virtual harassment, including virtual sexual harassment, to better reflect the nature of the modern workplace. And again, Speaker, the minister will consult with victims of harassment, legal experts and other stakeholders to identify potential future amendments to create a duty to act for employers where investigations find that there has been harassment in the workplace.

Lastly, I want to thank the minister for the amendments to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act in schedule 6 of this bill that would help keep our front-line workers, including first responders, healthy and safe. This includes changes to section 14 and 15 of the act to improve coverage for skin cancer for firefighters, fire investigators and volunteers by lowering the current requirement from 15 years of service to 10. Speaker, this would be the lowest in Canada, and it responds to growing evidence that firefighters have an increased risk of developing cancer, and not just because of the exposure to toxic chemicals during emergencies. An audit in Mississauga in 2019 found asbestos in several of the fire stations where firefighters live, eat and sleep during their shift, including stations 102, 103 and 104 in Mississauga–Lakeshore.

Again, I want to thank the Minister of Finance for the $30-million Fire Protection Grant program that was announced in the 2024 budget. This will make a real difference to help protect firefighters from exposure to toxic chemicals like asbestos and many others.

Speaker, I was at station 104 in Port Credit just last night for a tour with the Mississauga historical society and a presentation by award-winning photographer Stephen Uhraney about his experience with the firefighters of station 104. I urge all members to visit the photo exhibit—it’s called On Duty—if you have a chance to come to Mississauga–Lakeshore.

Speaker, schedule 6 would also expand the coverage for certain cancers, heart injuries and PTSD to wildland firefighters and fire investigators who worked so hard to keep Ontario safe last year, during the most difficult wildfire season in the province’s history. These changes would ensure that they have the same coverage as municipal firefighters, so I want to thank the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry and the member from Thunder Bay–Atikokan for all their work on this. Again, I know that the minister will continue to consult about expanding coverage even further; for example, for PTSD and for those who have to review body cam evidence. I look forward to speaking about that in Working for Workers Six.

Again, Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak on Bill 190 this afternoon. As I said, this bill builds on the historic reforms that our government has already made. It is the next step to support workers, from our first responders to women in the skilled trades, to job seekers young and old, injured workers and everyone in between. I hope that all the members in this House will support this bill moving forward.